Wednesday, November 11, 2015

NAEPscuses: Making Sense of Excuse-Making from the No-Excuses Contingent

[The recent] release of results from the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reports a dip in scores,
according to multiple sources. These lower grades on the Nation’s Report
Card are not good news for anyone, but they are particularly bad news
for those who have been vigorously advocating for “no excuses”
approaches — standards-based testing and accountability policies like No
Child Left Behind. Such policies follow a predictable logic: (a)
schools are failing; and (b) schools will quickly and somewhat
miraculously improve if we implement a high-stakes regime that makes
educators responsible for increasing students’ test scores.

To be sure, the sampling approach used by NAEP and the lack of
student-level data prohibit direct causal inferences about specific
policies. Although such causal claims are made all the time, they are
not warranted. It is not legitimate to point to a favored policy in
Massachusetts and validly claim that this policy caused that state to do
well, or to a disfavored policy in West Virginia and claim that it
caused that state to do poorly.

However, as Dr. Bill Mathis and I explained eight months ago in an NEPC Policy Memo,
it is possible to validly assert, based in part on NAEP trends, that
the promises of education’s test-driven reformers over the past couple
decades have been unfulfilled. The potpourri of education “reform”
policy has not moved the needle—even though reformers, from Bush to
Duncan, repeatedly assured us that it would.

This is the tragedy. It has distracted policymakers’ attention away
from the extensive research showing that, in a very meaningful way,
achievement is caused by opportunities to learn. It has diverted them from the truth that the achievement gap is caused
by the opportunity gap. Those advocating for today’s policies have
pushed policymakers to disregard the reality that the opportunity gap
arises more from out-of-school factors than inside-of-school factors.

Instead, they assured us that success was a simple matter of adults
looking beyond crumbling buildings and looking away from the real-life
challenges of living with racism or poverty. As a substitute, we were
told to look toward a “no excuses” expectation for all children. This
mantra has driven policy for an entire generation of students. The
mantra was so powerful that we as a nation were able to ignore the facts
and fail to provide our children with opportunities to learn.

So schools with low test scores were labeled “failing” and were shut
down or reconstituted or turned over to private operators of charter
schools. Voucher and neovoucher policies pulled students out of “failing
schools” (again, those with low test scores) and moved them to private
schools. Teachers whose students’ test scores didn’t meet targets were
publicly shamed or denied pay or even dismissed. Our entire public
schooling structure became intensely focused on increasing test scores.

But once we admit that those test scores are driven overwhelmingly by
students’ poverty- and racism-related experiences outside of school,
then “failing” schools are little more than schools enrolling the
children in the communities that we as a society have failed.

In the face of the mounting evidence that “reform” policies have come
up short, what are advocates saying now? The first sign came a week
ago, when Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute,
heard rumors about lower NAEP scores and pre-emptively announced
that the dip was likely caused by the recession triggered by the 2008
financial crisis. (He neglected to mention that this crisis was due to
the same sort of deregulatory policies promoted for education by Fordham
and similar advocates.) We must, he tells us, “acknowledge the strong
link between students’ socioeconomic status and their academic
achievement.” In short, he gave the same “excuse” that “no-excuses”
reformers have condemned year after year.

Mr. Petrilli is correct, of course — not about his implicit causal
argument for the new NAEP scores — but about the strong link to poverty.

A point comparable to Petrilli’s is made by Matt Barnum in “The Seventy Four,”
who tells his readers that “schools have an extremely important impact
on student learning, but out-of-school factors have an even greater effect
on student test scores.” Indeed, he continues, “The many out-of-school
factors driving achievement — the economy, access to healthcare, etc. —
mean we can’t even be sure that changes in NAEP scores had anything to
do with changes in schools.” The co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Seventy Four
is Campbell Brown, whose primary advocacy is for teachers’ tenure
protections to be based on students’ test scores. She has very little
tolerance for teachers’ excuse-making about how the students’ poverty
undermines their ability to drive those scores up.

A similar publication called the “Education Post,”
which advocates for standards-based testing and accountability
policies, also came out with a pre-release article, reminding people
that the general trend on NAEP scores is up. (What they neglected to
mention is that the trend was up before the reform era as well; there
has been steady growth for 30 years.) That article also suggests that
lower NAEP scores may be because Common Core’s focus has shifted
teaching away from the sorts of test items included in the NAEP. Chad
Aldeman of Bellwether
Education Partners, a consultancy think tank that advocates for the
same testing and accountability policies, pointed to the changing
demographics of NAEP test-takers and to Simpson’s Paradox and the need
to focus on subgroups.
Yes, it’s possible that NAEP scores could be impacted by
Common-Core-induced changes in what’s taught. And as noted above, those
scores certainly are impacted by poverty. But why are “no excuses”
reformers suddenly so busy making excuses?

It seems that the only lesson the new excuse-makers are asking us to
draw from their nod to the importance of poverty is something like,
“Don’t worry. The status-quo reform policies are probably still
working.” Even though these advocates are now vocally recognizing the
crushing impact of poverty, the policy implication of their epiphany
remains beyond their grasp. Can they really be asking policymakers to
keep focusing on test-based accountability in hopes that we might detect
a small uptick in 15 years (at the cost of broad and engaging
learning)? Won’t they acknowledge that our outcomes will continue to be
disappointing unless and until we address poverty itself?

In terms of educational policy, this points to continued investment
in, and research about, community schools and other wrap-around
approaches. But more broadly, it points to the need to think about
educational improvement within a broader set of policies addressing
housing, employment, wealth inequality and the social safety net.

It’s long past time to recognize that any benefits of test-based
accountability policies are at best very small, and any meager benefits
teased out are more than counterbalanced by negative unintended
consequences. Judging by the rhetoric of this past weekend from the
Obama Administration and others, there’s a growing recognition that the
American people are ready to move on. But we shouldn’t hold our breath
waiting for status-quo reformers who have ridden the “no excuses”
bandwagon for a generation to accept this reality and start advocating
for policies that focus on inputs and close opportunity gaps. We also
shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for them to call upon states to undo
those voucher and turnaround and charter-conversion policies based on
“failing schools.”

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So far as we know, we only get one lifetime. So, when I "retired" in 2004, after 31-years in public education I wanted to do something different. I wanted to teach, write and become a student again. I have since spent a decade in higher ed.

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On the campaign trail...with my wife Rita

An action shot: The Principal...as a much younger man.

Faculty Senate Chair

Serving as Mace Bearer during the Inauguration of Michael T. Benson as EKU's 12th president.

Teaching

EDF 203 in EKU's one-room schoolhouse.

Professin'

Lecturing on the history of Berea College to Berea faculty and staff, 2014.

Faculty Regent

One in a long series of meetings. 2016

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